Blood Orange, Fennel and Avocado Salad with Lemon Citronette

Welcome to the redesigned cookieandkate.com! I’m not quite finished working on it, but I couldn’t stand to keep it in hiding for any longer. The website is finally optimized for viewing on your phone, your iPad, etc. No more pinching and zooming so you can read the recipe! Try it!

Another noteworthy feature is the menu I added underneath the header. It’s designed to help you find the kinds of recipes you’re looking for. Click on ALL RECIPES to see little pictures of every recipe on the site as usual, or narrow your selection by clicking on SALAD, DESSERT, etc. FAVORITES is a list of readers’ favorite recipes, curated by yours truly.

Over in the sidebar, you’ll find lists of special diets and ingredients. I added a gluten free and vegan option for those of you who are trying to avoid gluten and animal products. Please let me know if you’d like to see any other diet combinations and I’ll try to make it happen!

This redesign has been a long time coming. I did it all myself because I’m very particular (read: control freak). Lots of late nights, Breaking Bad and dark chocolate peanut butter cups were involved. I’m still working on the recipe index pages and the search functionality. If you have any suggestions or feature requests, please let me know! I’m all ears.

Now then, this salad. I’m pretty obsessed with it. Tangy goat cheese and lemon dressing tossed creamy avocado, sweet blood oranges, sliced almonds and greens is a winning combination indeed. I usually want fennel to speak up more (be bold, fennel!), but its faint licorice flavor and crisp texture is the perfect complement here. Enjoy!

Lightly toast the almonds: In a small skillet over medium heat, toast the almonds for a few minutes, stirring frequently so they don't burn. Once the almonds are fragrant and starting to turn golden, remove from heat and transfer to a plate.

In a large serving bowl, combine the greens, segmented blood oranges, sliced fennel, diced avocado, goat cheese and warm almonds. If the fennel's feathery fronds (say that five times fast) are in good shape, chop up a handful's worth and toss them into the salad.

In a small bowl, whisk together the salad ingredients until emulsified. Whisk in more olive oil if the dressing tastes too tart. The final result should be pleasantly tangy.

Once you're ready to serve, drizzle citronette over the salad (you might not need all of it) and toss. Serve immediately.

Notes

Recipe yields 2 large salads or 4 side salads.Storage suggestions: If you intend to have leftovers, store the salad and dressing separately until you're ready to serve. If you can't find blood oranges, any tasty member of the orange family will do.Make it vegan: omit the goat cheese and substitute agave nectar or sugar for the honey.Make it nut free: If you want, try subbing the sliced almonds with a type of seed, such as pumpkin or sunflower.

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Did you make this recipe?

Please let me know how it turned out for you! Leave a comment below and share a picture on Instagram with the hashtag #cookieandkate!

Oh my goodness girl, you have done such a brilliant job! I LOVE it! You should be so proud of yourself and this salad sounds like a lovely way to celebrate, refreshing just like the design. Can’t wait to explore!

I really like the new design, Kate. I’m a pretty new blogger but actually your site was one of my first ‘favourites’ and your clean black and white layout definitely provided a bit of inspiration for me when I was ‘designing’ mine (loose term – more like fumbling my way around WordPress and trying not to crash everything too often!) I love how you’ve kept your original style and ‘look’ but just modernised and streamlined everything a bit more. You definitely should put your feet up now and celebrate with one of those lovely cocktails of yours … while watching more Breaking Bad of course!

Thank you, Helen. You totally summed up what I was trying to accomplish with the redesign. :) Web design is hard! You’re right, I think I need a cocktail for all of this hard work… I was up late working on it and watching Breaking Bad last night, too. I’m almost out of episodes to watch!

A well deserved salad for a lot of hard work. I need to put in the time on my site as well, I barely get a chance to sit and write a post. I am just going to have to go for it, maybe after I try this salad. Happy Nesting!

I’m very impressed! I can’t believe you designed this by yourself, I have tried to make minor improvements to my site and end up rocking myself in a corner trying to calm myself. tmi? It’s gorgeous, I love it. Very simple, user friendly and gorgeous. As is this salad. You rock!
You asked for suggestions for dietary highlights. How about sugar free and low sodium? Those are 2 I’m trying to work on myself.

Haha! That sounds thoroughly traumatizing. I took a web design class when I was 12 so I’m a nerd. Glad you like it. I’ll try to start labeling recipes that are sugar free and low sodium as such so they are easier to find. When you say sugar free, do you mean free of refined sugar, or no natural sweeteners, either?

Your website looks great and so does the salad! I recently switched my blog over to WordPress,(thanks to a suggestion from you!) and have been having a lot of fun, accompanied by a little bit of frustration, being able to make my page look exactly how I want it to look. I still haven’t gotten it to look quite exactly how I want it to, but it is a work in progress :)
I have to admit that I have never tried fennel before, so maybe I will use your delicious salad recipe as my first experience with it!

Hi Kate! Just wanted to drop you a line and say I love your beautiful blog and all of your great healthy recipes. I discovered you via Foodie Crush’s Friday Faves round-up, and can’t wait to follow along. Keep up the great work :)

I love your site design! It’s so clean. I also love the looks of this salad, such fresh flavors and a variety of textures. Are you in Kansas City? I’m headed there next month for Go Blog Social. Do you have any recommendations for places to eat with great vegetarian options?

Lindsay, so sorry I didn’t answer your question sooner! I highly recommend Eden Alley on the Plaza. It’s a vegetarian restaurant with a nice cafe feel and a great outdoor patio. I love their falafel salad. Füd and Cafe Gratitude are vegan restaurants, but to be honest, I’m not crazy about them. The Mixx is near the Plaza. It’s a casual place with really inventive salads and sandwiches. Westport Cafe (amazing drinks, fries, cheese plate, arugula salad) and Gram and Dunn (killer patio and salads) are two of my favorites for atmosphere. Pizza Bella in the Crossroads (the brussels sprouts app is killer and you can get it without the pork) and Coal Vines Pizza on the Plaza are good if you’re in the mood for brick oven pizza. Hope this helps!

I started reading your blog a few weeks ago and I absolutely love it! The design is stunning and photography is simply gorgeous. There are so many great meal ideas and I have loved trying all your recipes out so far. They are perfect for a simple, healthy, inspired lifestyle. The soba noodle peanut slaw especially went down a treat and tonight I’m going to the chana masala. This salad also looks amazing and I cannot wait to try that too. I thought perhaps a navigation option for recipes that contain no refined sugar could be really useful.

Emma, thank you so much for your thoughtful comment! I’m going to work on a no refined sugar category when I get the chance—might be a while, as it requires sifting through over 300 recipes, but it will be a helpful addition!

Hi. As a British person, please could you tell me what you are referring to with ‘spring greens’? In the UK these are young cabbage leaves and your picture looks more like ‘rocket’ (arugula) to me. I love the recipe on reading and am thinking of using a mixed salad bag of rocket, water cress and spinach – hope you think that works if you see this before Friday!

Looking forward to trying some more of your recipes as they offer something new to me and I’m not vegetarian but love all good fresh foods.

I went out to dinner with a group of friends last night and saw this salad on the menu (well, something very close to this salad). My friend ended up ordering it and I must say your recipe was 100x better than what the restaurant produced! This is one of my faves.

Sooo I’ve made it my mission to try all the different veggies at my farmer’s market – not just my typical mix of the same 5 things on repeat. Anyways, I decided it was time to try fennel and since I’ve never not liked one of your recipies, I made this salad. I learned: 1) I really don’t like fennel and 2) your recipes are so awesome its not even necessary to like all of the ingredients to eat up. Tomorrow I’ll be reverting back to your spinach artichoke enchiladas, which I loooove…